For many centuries, imperial examinations in many countries included written tests, oral interviews or practical demonstrations. Over the past few years, Taiwan has added students’ “learning portfolios” (學習歷程) to university admission, as institutions strive to recruit the best.
The Chinese for “learning portfolio” was borrowed from the English word “portfolio,” which means a selection of a person’s important works that displays their progress and achievements during the learning process.
In the 1970s, “learning portfolios” had been adopted in US elementary and secondary schools for academic and career counseling, focusing on evaluating students’ learning process, rather than being an assessment tool.
Originally, the purpose of the process was for students to think, plan, organize and give feedback when collecting and selecting their top work. From such portfolios, teachers and counselors can understand the process of students’ academic performance and progress, and provide meaningful feedback to assist them with problem-solving or career planning.
Importantly, the focus is on the learning process of “exploration, planning, growth, reflection, problem-solving and the production of concrete results.” During the process, a student might need to adjust their course selections to improve their weaknesses and improve their “diverse learning.”
However, since the concept of portfolios crossed the ocean to Taiwan, it has become a nightmare for students and many people feel pessimistic about it.
Apart from counseling, teachers can improve teaching materials and methods, or adjust curriculum planning according to the difficulties in students’ learning portfolios. They can also assist students in their development according to their growth patterns and trends. These are the fundamentals of teaching. It is the reflection, modification or advancement during teacher-student interactions that is the true essence of portfolios.
However, Taiwan misuses portfolios by making them part of the university admissions process. Something has been lost in translation. As a result, services for composing portfolios abound, while cram school teachers provide portfolio templates. The good intentions of portfolios have been lost.
Graduate school entrance exams developed by the US-based Educational Testing Service (ETS) — such as the GRE, TOEFL and TOEIC — have become internationally recognized assessment tools for their high reliability and validity. Why can Taiwan not learn from the ETS and develop better college entrance exams, making them discriminating, reliable, valid and difficult?
There is more than 50 years of data from test questions and answers from Taiwan’s college entrance exams that could be used as a database, including a “question bank,” for testing and assessment. There is no lack of testing and assessing talent at the nation’s universities.
If the government establishes a system, it could learn from the good example of the US. Then students would no longer have to struggle with portfolios, and schools would return to normal teaching and counseling.
If Taiwan can develop a “TestGPT,” it would be more beneficial than ChatGPT in the development of tests, as well as the assessment of the appropriateness of test questions and the fairness of major tests. This is likely to benefit students, schools and education. There is no shortcut to the cultivation of talent, who need our greater care and utmost attention.
Rau Dar-chin is an honorary professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Industrial Education.
Translated by Eddy Chang
A few weeks ago in Kaohsiung, tech mogul turned political pundit Robert Tsao (曹興誠) joined Western Washington University professor Chen Shih-fen (陳時奮) for a public forum in support of Taiwan’s recall campaign. Kaohsiung, already the most Taiwanese independence-minded city in Taiwan, was not in need of a recall. So Chen took a different approach: He made the case that unification with China would be too expensive to work. The argument was unusual. Most of the time, we hear that Taiwan should remain free out of respect for democracy and self-determination, but cost? That is not part of the usual script, and
Behind the gloating, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) must be letting out a big sigh of relief. Its powerful party machine saved the day, but it took that much effort just to survive a challenge mounted by a humble group of active citizens, and in areas where the KMT is historically strong. On the other hand, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) must now realize how toxic a brand it has become to many voters. The campaigners’ amateurism is what made them feel valid and authentic, but when the DPP belatedly inserted itself into the campaign, it did more harm than good. The
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) held a news conference to celebrate his party’s success in surviving Saturday’s mass recall vote, shortly after the final results were confirmed. While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) would have much preferred a different result, it was not a defeat for the DPP in the same sense that it was a victory for the KMT: Only KMT legislators were facing recalls. That alone should have given Chu cause to reflect, acknowledge any fault, or perhaps even consider apologizing to his party and the nation. However, based on his speech, Chu showed
For nearly eight decades, Taiwan has provided a home for, and shielded and nurtured, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). After losing the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the KMT fled to Taiwan, bringing with it hundreds of thousands of soldiers, along with people who would go on to become public servants and educators. The party settled and prospered in Taiwan, and it developed and governed the nation. Taiwan gave the party a second chance. It was Taiwanese who rebuilt order from the ruins of war, through their own sweat and tears. It was Taiwanese who joined forces with democratic activists
RSS